The local beaches continue to fire, with most holding good concentrations of salmon. North Tura has been a stand-out, with catches of a dozen fish to 3kg the norm.

The northern end of the beach towards Bournda Island has held a deep gutter and fishing this section very early in the morning on a rising tide has been prolific. Surf poppers are working well in a variety of colours, with Laser lures and whole pilchards also catching fish.

Tailor numbers should improve this month with the rocky foreshore near the island itself fishing better for bream. Cut crabs and pipi are both great baits here if targeting bream and a little berley in the shore dump will also increase catch rates.

Offshore, the snapper are still doing the right thing with most boaties getting a feed without much trouble. Anglers using berley have been getting best results, with chook pellets and frozen bread with tuna oil doing the trick.

Anchoring up on the edge of the reef and floating baits up the shallower sides of the reef has produced snapper to 5kg. All reefs are holding fish with Long Point and Lennards Island down south probably the most consistent.

The reefs out wider have produced Tassie trumpeter to 8kg, with blue-eye trevalla and hapuku available along the canyon walls. Fishing for the hapuku has been good of late, the weather and tide allowing anglers to stay stationary over the canyon walls and fish deeper sections.

There hasn’t been any sign of tuna as yet but this month that could change if last year is anything to go by. Towards the end of October good yellowfin and albacore appeared and let’s hope this season is the same. Trolling skirted and bibbed minnows is the only way to target these early pelagics, from the shelf to the second drop-off –a long way out but worth it if the tuna are there.

The Bega River to the north of Merimbula has been fishing well for bream and estuary perch. Good numbers of bream are upstream of Blackfellows along the snags with the upper reaches holding big estuary perch. Hard-bodied lures are the standouts with the guys throwing plastics finding it difficult.

The lower reaches should produce some bigger flathead this month with school mulloway around the bridge pylons also on the cards.

Merimbula Lake is fishing great guns with all the usual estuary-dwellers having a chew. The Top Lake is the place to fish with anglers catching fish by a number of different methods.

The entrance to Boggy Creek has seen tailor and nice flathead on a run-out tide with lures catching the majority. There are still a few fish in the Pambula River, not as good as early Winter, but what do you expect when the pros are netting the guts out of it? It’s a total disgrace in my books and something needs to be done about it.

Most local rock platforms are still producing fish with Short Point the pick of them if you target blackfish and drummer. I had a look down there the other day and saw two anglers with their bag limits of blackfish. They were using cabbage as bait and were berleying pretty hard. The fish averaged 800g with the odd bigger fish.

There are still a few salmon around the washes of most headlands with ganged pilchards and chrome lures the best way of catching them.